Why China is winning the spy war against us

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Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Premier Li Keqiang attend a plenary session of the National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sunday, March 11, 2018. China’s rubber-stamp lawmakers on Sunday passed a historic constitutional amendment abolishing presidential term limits that will enable Xi to rule indefinitely. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Increasingly, critics of former President Obama’s legacy are focusing their comments on his China policies.

Defenders of President Trump’s less-than-free-market instincts are putting their critical emphasis on economics, arguing that China’s huge gains discredit the West’s tradition of liberal trade. But while robust trade today is likely to strengthen global stability, the same cannot be said for China’s powerful advantage over the U.S. on security and spy games — a more painful leftover from the Obama years by far.

Public howlers included Beijing’s access to vast troves of inadequately secured Office of Personnel Management data in 2016. Unfortunately, that event was just one part of a grim and more secretive pattern.

Chinese spying has burrowed deep into the U.S. intelligence community, and Chinese agents have brutally shut down American human intel in country. Starting in 2010, Beijing rolled up the U.S. spy network in China, killing and jailing top sources.

Not until last month was Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA agent accused of aiding that program, apprehended. Not until this month was former DIA case officer Ron Rockwell Hansen arrested and charged with attempted espionage on behalf of China.

Yet despite these advances, Chinese hacking has continued seemingly unabated. Cyberwarriors recently broke into a database of submarine warfare information housed by a Navy contractor. Secret weapons plans contained therein are no longer secret, joining a long list of military projects whose cover has been blown. China has also acquired knowledge of technology powering the F-35 jet fighter, the Patriot missile system and the anti-ballistic missile system THAAD.

The time has come to bring this long pattern of setbacks to an end. Congress and the White House should work together to ensure all classified and sensitive national security and military information is as safe in the hands of contractors as it is in government hands. They should redouble efforts to purge the intelligence community of moles and informants. And they should supply the substantial resources needed to start from scratch in rebuilding America’s intel presence in China itself.

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